Retail stores of the future will be powered by generative AI, but truly frictionless shopping experiences envisioned by tech vendors may be a long way off.
Retailers may be bedazzled by generative AI, but for many companies it will take much data wrangling and investment to realize bottom-line results from the technology.
That was the general sentiment from tech buyers, vendors and other attendees at the National Retail Federation's NRF '25: Retail's Big Show held in New York Jan. 12-14.
There's much potential for generative AI to reduce labor and deliver more real-time insights up and down the supply chain and into stores, said John Furner, Walmart U.S. president and CEO and Azita Martin, Nvidia vice president and general manager for retail and consumer packaged goods, in a keynote sit-down conversation.
But the futuristic scenarios presented by more than 125 vendors with AI software and hardware on the NRF exhibit floor -- such as sensors that detect spills in a warehouse aisle and generative AI digital twins that swoop in, redirect forklifts around it and dispatch people to clean it up -- require data, people and processes to set up and execute.
Take, for example, personalization, which has been a difficult puzzle for retailers to solve and one that generative AI tech can potentially solve.
"We all know people in our lives, we know our customers individually," Furner said, "but in many cases, [retailers] are trying to understand, recognize and learn about millions of people at the same time -- and the data is always changing."
E-commerce personalization occurs with web search, Martin said. Generative AI understands searcher intent and sends that data downstream to enhance digital commerce on mobile apps and websites.
"Search has become AI-enabled, and it uses multiple generative AI models," Martin said. "It uses catalog enrichment, reasoning and embedded text, and all of that enables your e-commerce site, your mobile apps, to really deliver a much more personalized experience.